Italy

In fourth place with about 10% of the vote was the current prime minister - the free market, fiscally responsible (ie pro-austerity) Mario Monti.

In third place, winning about a quarter of the vote, is the completely insurgent Five Star party of the foul-mouthed stand up comic Beppe Grillo. He cannot stand for parliament himself because of a manslaugher conviction dating from 1981.

In second place with about 29.2% of the vote is Silvio Berlusconi's centre right coalition. Sex scandals, dodgy business deals and a record of policy failure in government haven't prevented Mr Berlusconi from winning three times as many votes as the markets' favourite candidate, Mr Monti.

And in first place, by the narrowest of margins, is a centre left bloc. Pier Luigi Bersani's left-leaning parties won 29.5%.

If Moody's downgraded Britain they and international markets are going to love this.

José María Aznar, who was the Prime Minister of Spain from 1996 until 2004, and a member of the centre-right People's Party, has written for the Times today (£). Aznar, who holds Europhile views, criticises the way European Union member states deviated from the strict fiscal rules they were expected to abide by, leading to the economic woes which now face several member states.

Firstly, Aznar welcomes European leaders waking up from "a denial of reality": "Europe’s political leaders are finally acknowledging the reality of the debt crisis suffered by some eurozone countries. This change of attitude is good news. Until last week’s summit, the European political consensus was a denial of reality, embellished with a large amount of rhetoric and appeals to a false sense of European solidarity."

I think most people in Britain have a pretty straightforward, and often accurate, view of Italy. They love going there for holidays in the sun, surrounded by the best art ever created in the Western World, great taste in clothing, and real attention to detail. In return, they have to put up with the terrible quality of public services. It is common knowledge that Italian red tape is still among the worst in Western Europe, and several public services, namely buses without a timetable, are appalling for many, including Italian nationals.

But not all Italy’s regions fit that description. Lombardy is an exception in several ways. While in recent years the Italian regions earned more and more independence, only Lombardy seems to have used that autonomy to apply subsidiarity efficiently.

Please don’t frown at that word, dear British reader. Subsidiarity isn’t just a promise of devolution to Member States to which the EU pays lip service, but actually quite an important concept that’s deeply rooted in Catholic social teaching. The term, first introduced indirectly by Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas and Althusius, was formulated in the 19th Century and further developed in the social encyclicals, from Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum on, reaching its most explicit formulation in Pius XI’s Quadrigesimo Anno (1931).

It indicates that matters should be handled by the least centralised authority possible. Under that doctrine states will have a ‘subsidiary’ function, that is to say, will only intervene in case intermediate bodies cannot solve a specific problem for any reason. It is a lot like what many British commentators call localism, which can appeal to even the most committed eurosceptics.